It should be said here that as the head of the field test laboratory, Bogomazov greatly helped GOSNIIOKhT to add a new substance, chemical agent A-230, to the Soviet Army’s chemical warfare arsenal.
Actually, the ongoing tests of A-230 on the new test site in Nukus (in Kara-Kalpakia, Uzbekistan) were not particularly encouraging. Possibly it was because the test site, which was built in 1983, had low-skilled personnel and the set-up and technical support were poor. Or maybe there were some other reasons.
At Nukus, the old cholinesterase method was used, and the faulty analysis it gave could well have been the main cause of failure. However, you can’t exclude the possibility that the military authorities were opposed to promoting A-230 as a chemical agent.
Before that I was already aware of a number of cases in which the military had some field analysis results adjusted downwards. This information came from a number of sources, including GOSNIIOKhT employees.
The situation dramatically improved in 1986, when Bogomazov was appointed Research Director in charge of all testing carried out by GOSNIIOKhT on the Nukus site. At that time he began working there on a regular basis. With his characteristic energy, Bogomazov had the test site provided with all the necessary equipment and instruments. It was staffed with the best specialists in analytical control, who were using chromatography for the analysis of samples on the highest scale. Sometimes the number of samples reached one thousand. The specialists who were sent to work in Nukus from GOSNIIOKhT and its branches saw their salaries raised.
Bogomazov quickly found a common language with the military people, as he had known many of them since his student days at MACD.
Possibly he could manipulate test results himself and adjust them upwards. However, I knew that the fate of the tests would not be decided by Bogomazov’s ability to manipulate the facts, but by more practical considerations. The military-chemical complex was badly in need of a stimulating factor, as Mikhail Gorbachev declared under perestroika.
If some sensational result was achieved by the military-chemical complex, this could engender such a stimulating factor, but that was possible only through close cooperation between civilian and the military leaders of the military-chemical complex.
In 1987, Petrunin announced at a party meeting that GOSNIIOKhT had achieved such a sensational success, one which only could happen once in every 40 years. He said the success could be called ground-breaking without any exaggeration.
At that meeting Bogomazov was sitting solemnly at the presidium, literally shining with happiness. He was so overcome with emotion that he occasionally closed his eyes for a long time. Almost everyone present at the meeting assumed that Petrunin was talking about the successful completion of tests on the new chemical agent A-230.
Still, I think that more than a few of the people present wondered: Why do we need all of that, when our country is suffering from acute shortages and everything is on the slippery slope down to Hell?
My story about Bogomazov would not be complete, if I didn’t tell you about his downfall.
Bogomazov achieved the height of his success in those days, but his active nature would not let him rest on his laurels. Time was working against him at GOSNIIOKhT, and his envious colleagues, and especially his boss Nikolai Kuznetsov, could not bear their lucky colleague’s success any more. Little by little, Bogomazov was pushed away from other promising research projects, in particular from testing the new binary weapons.
At that time, according to the media reports, the first joint ventures with foreign firms began sprouting up in Russia (though more on paper, than in reality). These joint ventures were developing various business projects for environmental protection, analytical instrument making, etc. Bogomazov was getting ready to work for one of them. This time, his vanity defeated him. By believing strongly in his indispensability and his privileged position at GOSNIIOKhT, Bogomazov completely lost his caution and his orientation.
Once, he came to work, and with obvious pride he began showing off his new business ID card written in English. For GOSNIIOKhT, this was like waving a red cape in front of a bull. He was immediately dismissed from his position as the head of the laboratory, and he was demoted to the position of junior researcher.
Humbled and insulted to his core, Bogomazov soon resigned from GOSNIIOKhT altogether and went into private business. According to the rumors, this did not work out either. Finally in 1994, he suffered a stroke and turned into a helpless invalid. At the age of 40-something, he was all alone. Everyone including his wife had deserted him. After a while Bogomazov recovered a little from his stroke, and decided to return to GOSNIIOKhT, but his days there were numbered and he died as a rank and file employee.
Fortunately, my debunking of Bogomazov’s discovery and the disappointment it caused my bosses did not reflect unfavorably on my own work. I continued my research and wrote my doctoral dissertation – “Development and Study of New Methods of Frontal and Elution Chromatography for the Determination of Micro-Concentrations of Chemical Agents.”
By the beginning of 1985, I had submitted my thesis work to the Science Council for defense. Most doctoral candidates have problems choosing official opponents for their theses, due to the limited number of institutions and people that can be asked to review their work, but I did not have any problems with that at all.
Long before Petrunin was appointed Director of GOSNIIOKhT, he agreed to be my official opponent. I think he agreed because he appreciated my work that had benefited the Volsk branch of GOSNIIOKhT, which he headed at that time. I gave all the assistance I could to the branch’s Physical Chemistry Department and acted as a scientific advisor to the graduate students who worked there. Two talented scientists, Valery Djuzhev-Maltsev and Nadezhda Steklenyova, wrote their master’s theses in chemistry under my guidance.
Two other people agreed to be my official opponents, Georgi Drozd and Vladimir Smirnov, and they also gave my work favorable reviews. Additionally, my work was received favorably by a number of interested scientific institutions that I had sent my dissertation and abstract to. Among those organizations was a department of UNKhV.
I successfully defended my dissertation in June of 1985, and all members of the Science Council unanimously voted “in favor” of it. During the defense, only Sheluchenko, made an attempt to question the validity of my results. He made some kind of a statement, saying that the results presented in the dissertation were obtained only from experimental research conducted in the laboratory, while in practice some of them might not be confirmed. Still, he acknowledged that the regularities revealed were of great importance.
Martynov, the former director of GOSNIIOKhT, was sitting in the front row, and he retorted immediately: “It’s great that this work opens up new prospects – as a doctoral thesis should!”
Sheluchenko pulled himself up short, seeing that the seeds of doubt he was trying to sow did not fall on fertile ground as expected. He continued “Despite my remarks, I think that the work meets the demands of a dissertation for a doctoral degree.”
Oh my God! People’s hearts are so mysterious! I still had a vivid recollection of a serious conversation with Martynov in his director’s office, back in 1976. It was immediately following a staff meeting, at which Beresnev blamed Revelsky and me for his own failures in the department, making us the scapegoats responsible. Martynov was infuriated, and after that meeting he openly threatened me with reprisals, saying he could do whatever he wanted with me. He also said then that I would hardly ever be able to defend a doctoral dissertation. After that incident my life became very hard, as Martynov actually gave out carte blanche for any actions against me. I don’t know whether Beresnev was telling the truth when he once confessed to me that if it hadn’t been for my talent and my ability to get results at work, he would have “handled” me as I deserved a long time ago.